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Large language models (LLMs) can learn from a few demonstrations provided at inference time. We study this in-context learning phenomenon through the lens of Gaussian Processes (GPs). We build controlled experiments where models observe…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Elif Akata , Konstantinos Voudouris , Vincent Fortuin , Eric Schulz

Large language models (LLMs) are trained for downstream tasks by updating their parameters (e.g., via RL). However, updating parameters forces them to absorb task-specific information, which can result in catastrophic forgetting and loss of…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed NLP with their remarkable In-context Learning (ICL) capabilities. Automated assistants based on LLMs are gaining popularity; however, adapting them to novel tasks is still challenging. While…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Anwoy Chatterjee , Eshaan Tanwar , Subhabrata Dutta , Tanmoy Chakraborty

Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capacity for in-context learning (ICL), where learning a new task from just a few training examples is done without being explicitly pre-trained. However, despite the success of LLMs, there…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-08-02 Xindi Wang , Yufei Wang , Can Xu , Xiubo Geng , Bowen Zhang , Chongyang Tao , Frank Rudzicz , Robert E. Mercer , Daxin Jiang

Language models have the ability to perform in-context learning (ICL), allowing them to flexibly adapt their behavior based on context. This contrasts with in-weights learning (IWL), where memorized information is encoded in model…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Suraj Anand , Michael A. Lepori , Jack Merullo , Ellie Pavlick

In-context learning (ICL) enables large language models (LLMs) to adapt to new tasks without weight updates by learning from demonstration sequences. While ICL shows strong empirical performance, its internal representational mechanisms are…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Jiachen Jiang , Yuxin Dong , Jinxin Zhou , Zhihui Zhu

"Induction heads" are attention heads that implement a simple algorithm to complete token sequences like [A][B] ... [A] -> [B]. In this work, we present preliminary and indirect evidence for a hypothesis that induction heads might…

We study how large language models (LLMs) reason about memorized knowledge through simple binary relations such as equality ($=$), inequality ($<$), and inclusion ($\subset$). Unlike in-context reasoning, the axioms (e.g., $a < b, b < c$)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Jonathan Shaki , Emanuele La Malfa , Michael Wooldridge , Sarit Kraus

Transformers have a remarkable ability to learn and execute tasks based on examples provided within the input itself, without explicit prior training. It has been argued that this capability, known as in-context learning (ICL), is a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-06 Yue M. Lu , Mary I. Letey , Jacob A. Zavatone-Veth , Anindita Maiti , Cengiz Pehlevan

We formalize a new concept for LLMs, context-enhanced learning. It involves standard gradient-based learning on text except that the context is enhanced with additional data on which no auto-regressive gradients are computed. This setting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Xingyu Zhu , Abhishek Panigrahi , Sanjeev Arora

Recent work suggests that large language models (LLMs) can perform multi-hop reasoning implicitly -- producing correct answers without explicitly verbalizing intermediate steps -- but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Jiaran Ye , Zijun Yao , Zhidian Huang , Liangming Pan , Jinxin Liu , Yushi Bai , Amy Xin , Weichuan Liu , Xiaoyin Che , Lei Hou , Juanzi Li

In recent years, pre-trained large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable efficiency in achieving an inference-time few-shot learning capability known as in-context learning. However, existing literature has highlighted the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-14 Xinyi Wang , Wanrong Zhu , Michael Saxon , Mark Steyvers , William Yang Wang

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated their ability to learn in-context, allowing them to perform various tasks based on a few input-output examples. However, the effectiveness of in-context learning is heavily reliant on the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-01-29 Liang Wang , Nan Yang , Furu Wei

While large language models based on the transformer architecture have demonstrated remarkable in-context learning (ICL) capabilities, understandings of such capabilities are still in an early stage, where existing theory and mechanistic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Tianyu Guo , Wei Hu , Song Mei , Huan Wang , Caiming Xiong , Silvio Savarese , Yu Bai

In-Context Learning (ICL) has been a powerful emergent property of large language models that has attracted increasing attention in recent years. In contrast to regular gradient-based learning, ICL is highly interpretable and does not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Brian K Chen , Tianyang Hu , Hui Jin , Hwee Kuan Lee , Kenji Kawaguchi

Large Transformer models are capable of implementing a plethora of so-called in-context learning algorithms. These include gradient descent, classification, sequence completion, transformation, and improvement. In this work, we investigate…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Robert Tjarko Lange , Yingtao Tian , Yujin Tang

Generative Large Language Models (LLMs) are capable of being in-context learners. However, the underlying mechanism of in-context learning (ICL) is still a major research question, and experimental research results about how models exploit…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Aliakbar Nafar , Kristen Brent Venable , Parisa Kordjamshidi

In-context learning (ICL) has emerged as a powerful paradigm for easily adapting Large Language Models (LLMs) to various tasks. However, our understanding of how ICL works remains limited. We explore a simple model of ICL in a controlled…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Omar Naim , Guilhem Fouilhé , Nicholas Asher

The remarkable performance of Large Language Models (LLMs) can be enhanced with test-time computation, which relies on external tools and even other deep learning models. However, existing approaches for integrating non-text modality…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-12 Tianle Zhang , Wanlong Fang , Jonathan Woo , Paridhi Latawa , Deepak A. Subramanian , Alvin Chan

Large-scale neural language models exhibit a remarkable capacity for in-context learning (ICL): they can infer novel functions from datasets provided as input. Most of our current understanding of when and how ICL arises comes from LMs…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-01-31 Ekin Akyürek , Bailin Wang , Yoon Kim , Jacob Andreas